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The parable of the prudent and unwise virgins has already received many comments, which indicate the adequacy of a more literal translation of the source text. Virgos are either sensible or stupid. That sounds emphatic. And can a well-heard phrase about salt that loses its taste equally stimulate the imagination? This metaphor in the original text contains an interesting play on words. The expression used in it to reflect the loss of the properties of salt also means “to become a fool.” With this in mind, this image also speaks to the imagination.
Each of us has lost something and is usually resigned to it. But have any of us become a fool? How from again, no one! Yes, we have lost some of the radicalism of early Christianity; yes, we do not read the Gospel very literally, but we are not fooled. On the contrary, it is our wisdom that we adapt so wonderfully to the world. But what does this world say? She gently tells the church that the salt is losing its flavor. Or without beating the bush: that this Church – a city on a hill that cannot hide from anything but eyes that should be the light of the world – this Church has gone stupid.
In an intriguing way, the liturgy this Sunday combines the text on salt losing its taste (Gospel: Mt 5: 13-16) with the text describing Saint Paul’s missionary method among the Corinthians (II Reading: 1 Cor 2: 1-5). The apostle made a second visit to Corinth, where a Christian community had recently formed. The young Church had to adapt to the multicultural surroundings of a large port city and to settle internal disputes. How to do it: how to talk about God, how to convince to Christianity, how to build unity?
Paweł, standing in front of these people, admitted that in his preaching he gave up everything that is human – let’s say: arguments, rhetorical tricks, marketing slogans, but also learned readings and discursive structures. “I have decided that I will know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and the crucified one,” said Saint Paul (of course with rhetorical eloquence). “My speech and teaching was not based on persuasive words of wisdom, but on displaying spirit and power so that your faith would not flow out of human wisdom but God’s power.”
Nothing but Jesus Christ. This is the saltiness of the salt. The problem faced by the Christian community on the Vistula River is the problem of what it proclaims, and therefore of credibility. It’s half-hearted Christianity. It is religiosity in place of petty-bourgeois ethics, full of greed for power, moralizing and emotional blackmail. It is salt losing its flavor because it is busy with many things, but not necessarily in preaching Christ. Why is this happening? One can risk the answer: because Jesus is known. It is Jesus, tame, rich and pre-arranged. Jesus failed.
“Hearing the question: ‘How to talk about God today?’, we spontaneously assume that we should talk to others, as if it did not concern us personally, said the French philosopher Fabrice Hadjadj, an atheist converted to Catholicism. – We make decisions about it unknowingly, because we are Christians, and the matter concerns non-Christians. But this could mean that we ourselves become smaller than all these non-Christians, that we imagine talking about God without constantly having to listen to His Word. We would thus become this ‘vain proclaimer of the word of God outside without being a listener inside it’ (Saint Augustine) “(Fabrice Hadjadj,” Antipode of Evangelization “).
Saint Paul in Corinth says one thing: I gave up everything and I have only for you what the knowledge of God gives me. The Church in Poland says the second: we have a whole set of human wisdom, which we offer to believe – she prepares a dish that has nothing to salt with, because salt has lost its taste. The voice of the Church, without Jesus, is sterile. The day of the consecrated life has just taken place. On this occasion, a large religious website published material that was to prove that religious life is attractive. All arguments boiled down to the imitation of activity in the so-called ordinary life, without indicating the essence of the choice of the religious path of life. What is the taste of such speaking about a vocation, what can it produce?
Bishop Andrzej Czaja talked about his alarm clock. Since he became the bishop of Opole, he had to change the wake-up time to an earlier one. Each day begins with prayer, reading the Holy Scriptures and celebrating the Eucharist. During the day, having the opportunity to speak, he refers to the current liturgical readings. When one of the people listening to the bishop on the occasion of the occasional speech, he was surprised that recently in the same situation the bishop was saying something different than this time, he asked him if there were no ready texts of speeches. Bishop Czaja had a short answer: “I share what I live.” The bishop of Opole simply refers to the liturgical readings of the day, because he lives by God’s wisdom, not his own. He probably learned that from St. Paul.
A church that does not live Jesus Christ alone and, contrary to Saint Paul, tries to proclaim something other than Jesus, and the crucified one, is like salt that loses its flavor – it is a fool. A church that shares what it lives on is a city on the mountain.
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